A Russian detective named Grinko (Ben Kingsley) is investigating the theft of a major shipment of heroin. American husband and wife Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are travelling across Siberia by train, on their way home from missionary work in China. A young Spanish man named Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and a young American woman named Abby (Kate Mara) are travelling on the same train, returning from teaching foreign languages to schoolchildren in Japan. As the train weaves its way across the forbidding, frozen landscape, these five lives will collide in unexpected ways.

CRITIQUE

Transsiberian is a terrific eighty-minute suspense flick. Too bad it runs almost two hours. For the fist three-fourths of its length, this movie presents some of the best methodical tension building I’ve seen in quite some time. But the movie goes completely awry during the climax, ripping a page or two from the sort of paint-by-numbers potboilers that serve as Hollywood’s equivalent to airport bookstore literature.

Aside from the prologue, the first half of Transsiberian plays more like a character-driven drama that it does a thriller. It works, though; writer-director Brad Anderson (director of Session 9 and The Machinist) imbues the story with, if not exactly a sense normalcy, at least an air of believability. All of what occurs in the first two acts is plausible on some level (even the incredibly stupid choices some of the characters make), and the path each subsequent scene leads us down, while well-worn, is a clear, logical one.

When the movie finally begins to shift into thriller mode, the story has reached a point where such a shift is another logical step. And after that the story continues to build, taking a couple of twists and turns, leading to...a sudden change in tone, an unfortunate, completely wrongheaded one, one from which the movie never recovers.   

I cannot fathom why Anderson and co-writer Will Conroy chose to end the movie way they do. Did they back themselves into a corner and take the easy way out? Is it a concession to genre or audience expectations? Did someone in the production office print out thirty pages from a completely different script? Whatever the case, the climax simply doesn’t work, not in and of itself and certainly not as a resolution for this particular story. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. I felt a mixture of anger and dismay when I realized what was coming, and you’ll definitely know when it’s coming.

There’s a scene that’s so out of place you’ll undoubtedly start wondering where it came from, why it’s in this movie (I know I did). It marks an unraveling of the story, and it only gets worse from there. What was a plausible story grows more and more preposterous; the characters begin acting in ways that are impossible to swallow, the contrivances begin to mount, and the resolution relies on a coincidence (it borders on deus ex machina) I simply couldn’t accept.

Everything that’s wrong with the movie can be found at the screenplay level. You certainly can’t fault the actors. Mortimer, around whom the majority of the story revolves, is terrific, and it’s nice to see Kingsley hasn’t totally discarded his craft in favor of cashing fat paychecks (yes, I’m talking about Bloodrayne and Thunderbirds). Cheers fans may see much of Woody Boyd in Roy (I know I did), but Harrelson is still good when it comes to playing corn-fed Midwesterners.

Another plus is Xavi Giménez’s cinematography, which is simply beautiful. Anderson and Giménez shoot the movie in extremes, favoring tight close-ups in interiors and wide, sweeping shots in exteriors. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the story takes most of its dark turns while the characters are off the train, when they’re the most physically distant from one another in terms of shot composition.)

The exteriors are particularly gorgeous, with the white, tree-lined landscapes extending as far as the camera eye can see. And, believe it or not, there’s one extended scene so stunningly photographed it rivals the ice palace sequence in Doctor Zhivago. No, I’m not kidding.

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer looks excellent. Colors are intentionally desaturated (at times they border on the sickly) in interiors, while the wintry exteriors are presented in their natural state; either way, the image looks fantastic. Detail never wanes, nor does depth. Blacks are occasionally drained to a slight degree, although arguably this is a consequence of the cinematography and not a transfer flaw.

THE AUDIO

Let’s ignore First Look’s decision to deny this release a lossless audio track (not sure why; there’s more than enough room on a single-layer disc for a movie of this length to sport a lossless track) and worry about the Dolby Digital 5.1 track they did include. The sound design for the movie is rather meticulous, creating a believable sense of space and atmosphere for any given location. Effects are also expertly placed, in both interiors and exteriors.

Further, there’s a surprising amount of deep bass action for such a talky movie (when you see that shot of the horse running through the snow, hold on). Dialogue is a bit problematic; in a somewhat odd turn of events, some lines are either buried in the mix or pushed too far forward, sometimes within the same scene (listen as Harrelson and Noriega walk alongside the old trains). An English Dolby Stereo track is also included. English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The sole extra on this disc is The Making of Transsiberian (34 minutes), an above average making-of featurette. Eschewing the typical EPK feel of so many similar pieces, this one actually concentrates on breaking down and chronicling the movie’s production.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Ah, what could have/should have been. Had the payoff been as strong as the setup, Transsiberian would easily have earned an unqualified recommendation. As it stands, though, you’re best off renting it and preparing yourself to watch it eventually run off the rails.